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'Carmen' splendidly sung but overacted at Fort Worth Opera Festival

It's mostly a musical triumph, but dramatically there's not an ounce of subtlety.

FORT WORTH--Surely no opera so tempts singers and stage directors to excess as Bizet's Carmen. With a cast of high-strung Gypsies, smugglers, soldiers and a bullfighter, in sun-baked Spain, parodies, even grotesques, sometimes substitute for probing character studies.

The Fort Worth Opera production that opened Saturday night, at Bass Performance Hall, had lots of stirring singing, from almost every character, and remarkably good French diction. But stage director David Lefkowich and the cast missed hardly an opportunity to overdo a gesture, a facial expression or a movement. The hyperactivity transpired in front of an uninspired pair of curving walls designed by R. Keith Brumley, with traditional costumes by Susan Memmott Allred.

Audrey Babcock as Carmen, in a dress rehearsal of a Fort Worth Opera production of "Carmen"...
Audrey Babcock as Carmen, in a dress rehearsal of a Fort Worth Opera production of "Carmen" at Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth, Texas on April 20, 2017.(Special Contributor)
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Fort Worth's Carmen, Audrey Babcock, supplies an aptly fiery soprano. But I don't buy her contention, in a program-book interview, that her character is "a monster."

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Yes, Carmen enjoys her power over men, and she can be rude, even a brawler, but mostly it's an offhand power; she doesn't have to work at it. She can't be such a parody of a slut, or such a man-eating monster, that she loses her feminine appeal. Alas, it's hard to imagine any man being drawn to Babcock's human version of a wood chipper.

Robert Watson is a plausibly clueless Don José, Carmen's deluded would-be lover, although his final desperation turns into too much of a mad scene. He commands a well-wrought tenor, with baritonal richness in the lower register and a fine blaze on top.

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Carmen began life as an opéra comique, which means having spoken, rather than sung, dialogue--as is selectively used in this production. But Lefkowich takes the label as an excuse to turn the first act into sometimes slapstick comedy.

Kerriann Otaño, as Micaëla, comes looking for Don José in dress rehearsal for the Fort Worth...
Kerriann Otaño, as Micaëla, comes looking for Don José in dress rehearsal for the Fort Worth Opera production of "Carmen" at Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth, Texas on April 20, 2017.(Special Contributor)

Don José's back-home beloved, Micaëla, is usually portrayed as a shy goody two-shoes, but Kerriann Otaño shows up grinning like little Buttercup washed up from H.M.S. Pinafore. Paradoxically, she commands a voice of almost Verdian richness, power and expressivity. The disparity is disorienting.

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Craig Irvin's Escamillo comes off as more of a capitalist shyster than a dashing bullfighter. His richly leathery baritone is a pleasure, but pitches and rhythms aren't always precise. Trevor Martin is a rustic-voiced Moralès, but the rest of the secondary roles get admirable vocalism: Zuniga (William Clay Thompson), Frasquita (Christina Pecce), Mercédès (Anna Laurenzo), Le Dancaïre (Alex DeSocio) and Le Remendado (Brian Wallin).  Once past a ragged early passage, the young chorus, prepared by Stephen Carey sang rousingly and well.

Led by music director Joe Illick, members of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra supplied requisite flair and atmosphere. Pacing was generally sensible, although the quintet "Nous avons en tête un affaire" was taken faster than the singers could spit out words and notes.

Formerly the classical music critic of The Dallas Morning News, Scott Cantrell now covers the beat as a freelance writer.

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Repeats at 2 p.m. April 30 and 7:30 p.m. May 5 at Bass Performance Hall, Fourth and Commerce, Fort Worth. $17 to $195. 817-731-0726, fwopera.org.